Today, Americans are getting married less and less; the numbers of
unmarried couples and single parents have risen. And yet, marriage —
idealized, perfected marriage, marriage “worth fighting for” — has never
had such a strong hold on our political imagination. However much the
practice may be waning on the ground, the concept of marriage has found a
revived energy in the rhetoric of policy-makers and pundits on both the
Right and the Left. Cultural conservatives rally around preserving a
nostalgic image of the nuclear family, those good old days when a man
could walk through the door to a pot roast and a set of smiling faces.
Meanwhile, the most exciting political announcement of the last year for
Democrats was President Obama’s concession that gay men and women, too,
might one day get married. The more insistently Americans seem to be
leaving the institution behind, the stronger its purchase on our
language and public policy goals. Why? Two books help illustrate the
persistence of these ideals.